A parametric study of the linear growth of magnetospheric EMIC waves in a hot plasma

Abstract

Since electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves in the terrestrial magnetosphere play a crucial role in the dynamic losses of relativistic electrons and energetic protons and in the ion heating, it is important to pursue a comprehensive understanding of the EMIC wave dispersion relation under realistic circumstances, which can shed significant light on the generation, amplification, and propagation of magnetospheric EMIC waves. The full kinetic linear dispersion relation is implemented in the present study to evaluate the linear growth of EMIC waves in a multi-ion (H+, He+, and O+) magnetospheric plasma that also consists of hot ring current protons. Introduction of anisotropic hot protons strongly modifies the EMIC wave dispersion surface and can result in the simultaneous growth of H+-, He+-, and O+-band EMIC emissions. Our parametric analysis demonstrates that an increase in the hot proton concentration can produce the generation of H+- and He+-band EMIC waves with higher possibility. While the excitation of H+-band emissions requires relatively larger temperature anisotropy of hot protons, He+-band emissions are more likely to be triggered in the plasmasphere or plasmaspheric plume where the background plasma is denser. In addition, the generation of He+-band waves is more sensitive to the variation of proton temperature than H+-band waves. Increase of cold heavy ion (He+ and O+) density increases the H+ cutoff frequency and therefore widens the frequency coverage of the stop band above the He+ gyrofrequency, leading to a significant damping of H+-band EMIC waves. In contrast, O+-band EMIC waves characteristically exhibit the temporal growth much weaker than the other two bands, regardless of all considered variables, suggesting that O+-band emissions occur at a rate much lower than H+- and He+-band emissions, which is consistent with the observations.